


Here Be Dragons

by Spid3rBaby



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (but not in a kinky way), 1920s, 1930s, A Rogue Minerva McGonagall Appears, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dragons, F/M, FBAWTFT Never Happened, Fix-It, Good Slytherins, Good Tom Riddle, Hogwarts Inter-House Friendships, Magical Creatures, Modern Girl in the Wizarding World?, No Bashing, Parseltongue, Possessive Tom Riddle, Racism, Sane Tom Riddle, Shirley the Basilisk, Tom is a psychopathic horror child and we love him for it, Tom is a softie, Wizarding World (Harry Potter), Wool's Orphanage (Harry Potter), sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27123167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spid3rBaby/pseuds/Spid3rBaby
Summary: On the first of January, 1935, one little girl walked through the gates of Wool's Orphanage.On that same day, Tom Riddle made his first friend.Nuna Shaw is an unusual girl -- after all, how many people do you know who remember their past life? Born again into a world she's only known from books, Nuna must use all of her wits to navigate post-Depression England. Add magic and a handsome, vaguely familiar orphan boy into the mix, and you have a recipe for disaster...
Relationships: Minerva McGonagall/Dougal McGregor, Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s), Tom Riddle/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 117
Collections: Harry Potter fics





	1. Prologue I

_The beginning of her life was a confusing jumble of sights and sounds that she wouldn’t fully sort through until several years afterwards, but the memories of which would remain forever.  
  
She remembered the accident, clear in her mind though the details that surrounded it were hazy, clouded over by the mist of alcohol. She got into the car, she was driving, she thought she might be crying, and her vision was blurred and her foot on the accelerator was pressing down harder and harder–  
  
And then there was a flash of bright white, the bright glare of headlights in front of her and she was never going to swerve in time. There wasn’t even a chance to brace for impact, only the screeching of tires and the shattering of glass, the crunch of metal. Then she was lying on the asphalt ground, grit digging into her skin and rain pounding down on her face. Her spine burned and her head was splayed at a horrible, unnatural angle, the pain, so much pain it was unbearable, her back was on fire and her chest caved in like a paper bag. When the darkness crept over her vision and pulled her away, her only feeling was relief._

* * *

There was light.

At first there had been nothing, but so soon that nothing was replaced with this searing white that made her cry out in shock and hurt.  
And then when she started crying, it was as if she couldn’t stop because her body felt too small and too weak and the world was so loud and bright and none of this was right. She sobbed and sobbed, even as calloused hands wrapped her in blankets and passed her off to a pair of hands far softer and for the first time her tiny eyes squinted upwards and saw not just light, but into a tear-stained face.

There were more voices around her, calling out to each other in a jumble of sounds that seemed at once foreign and familiar to her. And then the hands holding her shifted to stroke her squished cheek, and the face murmured something using those strange sounds and she found that she understood.  
  
“Hello, my little baby.”

Perhaps it was the shock at understanding what the face had said, but that shut her right up.

They named her Nunziatina Shaw.

Later, she would learn that it was in honour of her long-dead Italian grandmother, but at the time all she could think was that her parents had held some terrible grudge against her for giving her mother such a difficult pregnancy. When she grew a little bigger and learned how to enunciate words, she insisted that they call her Nuna, and eventually her parents gave up on trying to change her mind.

Her parents.

The concept was so strange – that these two people, who seemed at once so close and yet so distant, were her parents. Mother was dark haired and tanned, her face framed by thick waves and perfectly curved eyebrows which would arch just a little bit higher whenever she caught Nuna doing something that she shouldn’t. Sometimes she spoke in a beautiful, lilting language that she said came from her birthplace Itallia, but most of the time she spoke a slightly rougher language – the one which, somehow, Nuna already new – and that language was called English.

Father was everything that Mother wasn’t. His skin was pale and his hair the colour of strawberries. His eyes were a peculiar off shade between blue and green, as if they couldn’t quite decide which colour they wanted to be. When he spoke English (he always spoke English) then he spoke it in a way that ebbed and flowed like the tides, with an edge of harshness to it. 

He came from a place called Dundee, and she came from a place called Italia, but together they lived in a place London, which was grey and smog-filled and loud. They were neither well-off nor poor, but instead existed in that middle ground where they bought threadbare clothes first-hand and Father worked extra shifts at the weekend. The house they lived in was cramped, but there was a tiny garden in the back with a stout little Elder tree that Nuna would often escape to when she was old enough to walk, hiding amongst the leaves to daydream. When she looked back on these days in later years, the tree would be the thing she remembered with the most clarity.

Nuna grew quickly, in those first few months, but she didn’t do very much. Her crib was in the tiny nursery on the first floor, with a single window that looked out onto the street below. Although she had supposedly been born in summer, it rained most days and hailed on the ones that it didn’t. Nuna grew accustomed to the gentle tap of water on the roof tiles lulling her to sleep at nights, and heavy lashings of hail waking her up again in the morning. Mother would take her out some days, in the small rickety pram to see the park, or on her hip once a week to the grocers and the butchers. Nuna looked around her with wonder at the strange, foreign-yet-familiar world and wondered why it never felt like enough.

The trees at the park faded from green into red and the mornings were overcast with mist more often than not. Nuna learned to roll and sit and throw her teddy bear out of the crib, and if she seemed to pick things up a little quicker than the average baby, well, her parents had nothing but pride for their precocious little daughter.  
  
By the time the first snow started to fall, Nuna had figured out how to crawl, and developed a great love of wandering. Mother became more and more harried as she ran around searching for her errant child, who was often to be found sitting innocently under the table, or in the bathtub or, in one case, on the pavement halfway down the street. Father laughed fondly whenever Mother would tell him, exasperatedly, just where their daughter had escaped to last.

“She’s a wee explorer, is all,” he said, scooping Nuna up onto his hip. “My little explorer.”

Nuna gazed up at him and grinned.

But winter heralded another change. The summer nights, which had for so long been short and sweet things lit by bright moons, morphed into long stretches of pitch black, made worse by the cold winds that rattled the windowpanes and crept through the thin, draughty walls. And Nuna didn’t like it one bit.

She wanted to cry out, to call for her parents, but it was as if the fear bubbling up inside of her was choking her, forcing the sound down. the darkness swelled around her, the cold bringing her back to one night, a night that she didn’t remember living, where _there wasn’t even a chance to brace for impact, only the screeching of tyres and the shattering of glass, the crunch of metal. Then she was lying on the asphalt ground, grit digging into her skin and rain pounding down on her face–_

Something started to build inside her then, a kind of pressure that she could feel deep in her chest. It was like a gentle warmth, pushing against her ribcage and steadily growing hotter and hotter. It grew until it encompassed her whole torso, then her arms and her legs and finally, her head. Then Nuna opened her eyes and gasped.

Floating above her, rotating gently as if suspended from strings, were three little balls of light. One was glowing a pale blue, the second a gentle pink, and the last one a pure snowy white. Nuna stared at them entranced, reaching one tiny hand up to touch them in awe. She batted the blue one, and it floated away as if it was moving through water. 

Nuna couldn’t help it; she laughed. 

It was like… 

_Magic._

The nights didn’t bother her, after that. She never managed to conjure up all three lights again, but she developed a knack for creating one, or perhaps two if she tried hard enough. They would circle lazily above her head like a mobile, the comforting light warding off the shadows and lulling her into sleep. They were always gone by the morning, which was probably best because she didn’t want Mother to worry. Mother worried enough, anyways.

For a while, the lights were the only strange happening around Nuna. Winter left and spring followed, and then it was summer again and she celebrated her first birthday. Father bought her a little set of bricks, engraved with symbols – letters. He took to reading her stories in the evenings, when he wasn’t too tired. They had a book filled with fairy stories, about princesses called Cinderella and Snow White and Belle, rescued by handsome princes and chased by wicked witches. Nuna’s favourite tale quickly became the one with The Wild Swans, a choice which mystified her parents.

She could spell her name before she was two and spoke near-perfect full sentences. By now she was able to walk properly, often disappearing from Mother’s side to pick snails off the side of the path whenever they went for trips to the park and collecting leaves from the gutters. Mother tutted disapprovingly and chided Nuna gently for making her hands dirty, but she didn’t try to stop her.

The more Nuna grew, the more she realised that she wasn’t normal. She remembered things that she shouldn’t – flashes of a life that she didn’t live. The most prominent of these memories was the one that had plagued her nights during the long winter, but it was not alone. She saw a middle-aged woman with a careworn face and plain brown hair. Sometimes she was happy, sometimes she was angry but most of the time she was crying. It was odd to Nuna, because although she knew that Mother was her mother, something in her seemed to shriek in defiance at the thought of anyone other than the sad woman holding that title.

There were other pictures, too – a world that was even greyer than London, a building full of other people who were at once years older than her and yet also the exact same. Images that moved in colour on square screens, funny tin cans that might have been motor cars. She asked questions, of course, asked why no one else could remember a time before they were born, but she could see that it upset Mother, and if it upset Mother then she wouldn’t talk about it.

When she was three, she caught sight of herself in the mirror for the first time. Her face, although still rounded with baby fat, was clearly angled, with a rectangular jaw and small nose. Her skin was paler than she expected, the same white as Father’s and dotted with freckles. In fact, she was the very image of Father, with the same jewel-toned eyes and red hair that was just a few shades strawberry of blonde. She wondered if she would be tall like him too one day.

Despite her loving parents, Nuna found herself growing lonely as she became older. Father worked nearly every day, dawn until dusk, and Mother was clearly overwhelmed with her own workday in and day out. Now that Nuna was old enough not to require constant supervision, Mother was out more often errands, or whirling through the house in a cloud of dusters and bleach scrubbing the furniture and cooking dinner. When she wasn’t doing that, she was stuck away in her bedroom, hunched over her desk, drawing.  
  
Mother was an illustrator for a small printing press, drawing simple sketches for children’s stories. Although Nuna occasionally liked to peer over her shoulder and watch her work, she quickly grew bored of sitting so still. Instead she entertained herself by sitting under the elder tree with her bear, who was imaginatively named ‘Mister.’ They would play at being intrepid adventurers, tunnelling through the hedge or clambering over tree roots.

It was a day much like this, the summer after Nuna had just turned three. Mister and herself were playing at climbing the tree, which was still very much a challenge for the both of them – Mister because he was a stuffed animal, and Nuna because she was regrettably short with the muscle mass of a toddler. She had given up trying to climb the dratted tree – the stupid thing was just so tall, and she was infuriatingly little!

“I can’t do it,” she sighed, looking across the grass to where Mister was sitting placidly against the tree. “It’s just so hard.”

Mister didn’t reply, staring at her with beady eyes.

“Oh, well I’d like to see you do any better,” Nuna said indignantly, frowning at him.

There was silence again, before Nuna dropped her expression, sighing again.

“I wish you could talk back, Mister,” she said wistfully. “Mother never has time to talk to me now, and Father is always so tired.”

Nuna paused then, an idea taking hold of her. She had made the lights appear. And she had floated one of the letter blocks into her hand when it rolled across the floor one time. Could she… ?

The little girl grabbed Mister by one stuffed arm, bringing him closer to her as she shut her eyes, concentrating hard. She could feel the warm pressure start to build in her chest, far faster than it had the first time she ever did It. Nuna furrowed her brow, trying to will that energy into her hands and into the bear. The warmth was hotter than she had ever felt it before, almost hot enough to burn her, but she kept her grip firm, not allowing her concentration to slip.

Then there was a sudden jolt of energy, as if she had shocked herself, and she felt Mister fly out of her hands. Immediately, Nuna scrambled to her feet and rushed over to him, peering at him somewhat fearfully, as if she expected him to burst into flames at any moment.

But the bear did not burst into flames. Instead, he _moved_. Nuna shrieked despite herself, stepping back. Mister stood on uncertain feet, tilting his head to the side as he looked at her, as if to ask _what’s the fuss about?_

Tentatively, Nuna stepped forward again. “Hello,” she said shyly. Mister didn’t speak, but he lifted a single furry paw and waved it slightly, causing Nuna to giggle. “My name is Nuna,” she said, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

She took a paw gently in her hand and gave it a small shake. “Say, do you like to climb trees?”

It was hours before Father came home and Mother called her in for dinner, but Nuna barely noticed the time flying by. As she lay in bed later that night, grinning from ear to ear and clutching her squirming bear, she thought to herself that perhaps this summer would turn out better than she had imagined.

Incidentally, that summer would mark the end of Nuna’s carefree days of early childhood.

Because only a month later, Father lost his job. Rent became unaffordable, they lost the house, moved to some of the poorest slums in London and Nuna was rudely awakened to the realities of living in the middle of a Great Depression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't expect consistent updates on this. I am a very unreliable human being


	2. Prologue II

By some miracle, Mother managed to cling onto her job. A single part-time wage was their income now – a pitiful allowance, really, barely enough to cover rent. They moved into a tiny, one-bedroom apartment with grime on the ceiling and mould in the cupboards. Nuna slept on the battered couch now, a thin blanket protecting her from the cold (heating was hard to come by now and the small fire in the hearth had always burned down by the time the worsts of the night drew in).

Nuna continued to grow steadily, but they couldn’t afford to buy her new clothes – instead, they traded away her old ones for faded hand-me-downs from the family that lived the floor below them. Winter crept up on them slowly, its presence becoming known in the frosted windowpanes and creaking pipes, causing Nuna to shiver and burrow further into her blanket, hugging Mister close when the darkness overcame her. She used her nightlights nearly every day now, allowing their comforting glow to lull her to sleep.

Mother knew about her magic, of course – it was hard to miss, when her daughter was constantly using it to levitate things towards her or make her teddy bear move. She even used it for her own gain sometimes – asking Nuna to boil the water in the saucepan for tea or change the radio station. However, she put her foot down after Nuna accidentally flooded the apartment the winter after she turned four.

Nuna maintained that it hadn’t been her fault – she hardly _asked_ that strange water creature to crawl out of the plughole – but Mother remained unmoved. Magic became an outdoor activity after that.

When Nuna was five, she was allowed to run unsupervised on the street. The children who lived in the neighbourhood with her were older and they were bigger, but she soon established herself as someone worth as much as any of them. When they played games like football, she would make the ball soar far further than it should, or it would mysteriously scuttle out of reach of the defenders, rolling into the goal. They played hopscotch on moving tiles, tried to throw their balls into the chimney pots (with a little assistance from Nuna) and whichever team she was on when they played cricket was the guaranteed winner – they would score as many runs as they pleased whilst the fielders scattered searching for a ball that almost certainly flew through Mrs Gibson’s kitchen window!

She was, all in all, a very popular girl by the time summer ended and she prepared for one of the biggest hurdles of her short life; school. Each morning she would leave the apartment building and walk fifteen minutes to the primary three blocks away, books in hand. It was a large concrete block of a building, the tiny windows cracked and unclean and grass emerging through the fractures in the front steps.

Her classroom was 23F, a cramped room on the first floor with faulty lights and a blackboard that was faded permanently grey from use. Her teacher was a plain but kindly young woman called Miss Culter who consistently broke staff dress code by wearing fuzzy sweaters and horrendously bright shawls. The letters and simple arithmetic that dominated the classwork was almost insultingly simple to Nuna. She had been doing basic sums in her head more or less since she was born as far as she knew, had known how to read since two and write since three. Miss Cutler soon noticed this and began to bring Nuna extra work from the higher grades.

But she raced through the majority of this work, too; it took her less than a week to master multiplication and division, then basic trigonometry workbooks, then a number of long-forgotten science magazines from the school’s musty library. In fact, it wasn’t long before Nuna had read every book in the building.

At something of a loss as to what to do, Miss Cutler began to send Nuna on forty-minute errands to the library of the local academy, where she was instructed to pick out a book and return with it to read. Moby Dick, The Good Earth, Bram Stoker – Nuna read it all.

She had no shortage of companions in the playground. She was a genuinely friendly person, and her ‘talents’ were known throughout the school, making her an endless point of attention. So much so, that even some of the older kids – who usually thought they were too important to mingle with the younger years – would approach her whenever their ball was kicked onto the roof. She gathered quite the crowd when she floated up to the ledge and brought it back down again.

But just because Nuna was a popular figure in the schoolyard, did not mean that everyone was. It was one frosty recess in late November when Nuna stumbled across Denis Fawley, a brutish boy two years above her, bullying a girl with wispy blonde hair and glasses in the corner of the playground. Nuna recognised her from class; she sat three seats in front of her, and the girl wasn’t sure she had ever heard her speak. Denis was laughing as he shoved her roughly to the ground. Every time she tried to stand up again, he would let her get almost all the way, before giving her another hard push. The girl wasn’t crying, however, despite the grazes on her hands and knees. Rage swelled in Nuna.

“Hey!” she shouted, marching towards Fawley. “Who do you think you are, shoving her around like that?”

If he were any other student, Denis would have immediately backed down when faced with the sight of an angry, yelling Nuna. However Denis was not the brightest of boys, so he instead blinked rather stupidly, before sneering at the redhead. “You can’t stop me,” he said. “Or I’ll shove you around, too.”

Nuna raised an eyebrow in an expression of doubt that looked bizarrely out of place on a face so young. “Right,” she said sceptically, before walking straight past Denis and approaching the girl, who was sitting on the ground looking at Nuna in amazement.

“Are you alright?” she asked gently. The blonde opened her mouth to reply but before she could, Nuna felt a hard shove to her side that sent her sprawling on the gravel. She lay there for a moment in pure shock, before she rolled over into a kneeling position, glaring at the boy who had pushed her.

Denis was laughing again, at her this time. he was more of an annoyance than a real threat to her, but even so Nuna could feel her fists clench in outrage as she narrowed her eyes.

The boy’s laughter abruptly cut off with a startled choke. He gasped, opening his mouth as he tried to speak again but no sound came out. Instead, he gaped at Nuna as she smirked. With a sharp, one-handed gesture, Denis was yanked into the air by some invisible force, before being dropped down again, landing on his front with a heavy thud. He scrambled to his feet, but Nuna barely gave him a second to get them under him before she sent him skidding away across the ground, pulling him this way and that until he was quite dizzy. Only the did she release him from her magic, causing him to sway and fall to his knees, crying.

“You can go now,” she said, smiling sweetly. 

Denis didn’t need to be told twice. Still sobbing like a baby, he turned tail and fled.

When she was sure he’d gone, Nuna turned back to the girl at last. “Hello,” she said softly. “I’m Nuna Shaw.”

The girl gazed at her warily for a moment, as if weighing up the chances of Nuna picking her up and throwing her too, before lowering her gaze. “Sandra Smith,” she replied at last.

Nuna smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

Glancing over at the ground, her gaze caught on a book, lying a few feet away on the ground. Nuna reached to pick it up, scanning the front cover. It was one of the books in the library, an adventure story called _Swallows and Amazons_ that Nuna remembered reading a few months before. She offered it out to Sandra.

“Here, is this yours?”

Sandra snatched up the book with a hurried thanks, tucking it hastily into her waistband.

“I read that one a little while ago,” Nuna commented. “I thought it was quite interesting – especially the part where they met those other two girls – Peggy and Nancy. Nancy’s my favourite characters, who’s yours?”

Sandra seemed to hesitate. “Umm… I’m not really sure,” she said uncertainly.

Nuna frowned. “Oh. Have you not read any of it yet?”

“You’ll think me simple,” Sandra whispered.

“I would never,” Nuna promised her solemnly.

Sandra hesitated. “I… I can’t read properly,” she said in a rush. “I try, honest, but the words just don’t sit straight.”

Nuna frowned. “Oh,” she said. “That’s odd. Perhaps it’s just the way Miss Cutler teaches it. I can help you, if you like.”

Sandra gaped. “You… you don’t think I’m an idiot?”

“Of course not!” Nuna said, affronted. “Why would I ever think that?”

“You're always ahead of the work in class,” Sandra said. “Everyone says you're so smart – is it true that you go to the secondary school and get lessons there?”

“I only go to the library,” corrected Nuna. “And I’m not that smart – I just already learned to read before I got here. My father taught me.”

“My father tried,” confessed Sandra miserably. “But he gave up, because I just couldn’t get it. Grandma says that it’s ‘cos I’m stupid, and no one wants to be friends with someone stupid. I guess it must be true.”

“You're not at all stupid,” said Nuna firmly. “Just different. I bet they haven’t been teaching you right – if you like, I can try and teach you. And then you can be _my_ friend, how’s that.”

Sandra seemed cheered by this, and Nuna felt a wave of pity wash over her, as well as a determination to help this lonely girl. 

And help her, she did. From that day on, it was rare to find the two of them _not_ together, sitting in the corner of the yard hunched over a textbook, or playing games together. Sandra seemed to suffer from a severe lack of confidence – helped in no way by her family’s poor attitude towards her learning and then Denis Fawley’s tormenting. But when she came out of her shell a little, Sandra became one of the loudest people Nuna had ever met.

With Nuna’s help, she had mastered reading by the time spring had arrived. When she had the basic phonetic sounds down, she was unstoppable, learning faster than Nuna had thought possible (and much faster than she had).

“What was it that you did to Denis, that day we first met?” Sandra asked one day.

“You mean with the…” Nuna trailed of, gesturing her hands wildly.

“When you moved him around,” Sandra said, nodding.

“Oh. Well, I don’t really know, honestly. I do it all the time – like this.” Nuna demonstrated quickly, lifting the maths textbook they were pouring over into the air, then causing it to drop back down with a snap of her fingers.

Sandra’s eyes widened in awe. “Wicked,” she whispered. “Why did you never tell me before?”

Nuna hesitated. “I guess I was afraid that you might think I was weird, I guess,” she said. “I mean, loads of the kids on my street like to see me do it, but there were some that called me a Devil’s child.” she looked up at Sandra woefully. “I couldn’t bear it if you called me a Devil’s child, too.”

“I think it’s amazing,” said Sandra firmly. “How long have you been able to do it?”

Nuna shrugged. “Since I can remember.” She grinned. “I brought my bear to life, once. He still moves around, too – though he sits in my bed most of the time, because Mother doesn’t like me doing tricks anymore. Not since the bathroom incident.”

“You brought your toy to life?” her friend practically squealed. Then, looking uncharacteristically bashful, “could you do it to my doll, too?”

Sandra’s doll was called Emily, and when she brought her in the next day, she was wearing a faded pink dress, and her hair was in blonde ringlets that were fallen half out of their crimped style. But she was Sandra’s pride and joy, and a great deal better cared for than most of the toys Nuna had seen.

Any imperfections Emily may have had faded away when she came alive for the first time. Sandra had shrieked in joy, thanking Nuna far more gratuitously than any of the boys did when she returned their football.

Time blended together for a while; she turned six just before her first year of school ended, and Mother finally put down pen for a single day and baked Nuna a cake worthy of a princess (or so it felt). When she blew out the candle, Father smiled for the first time since Nuna could remember. Summer that year was hot, and for the first time in Nuna’s memory, the tarmac outside the apartment building melted in the midday heat. By popular request, she learned how to freeze juice and coke, so that the other kids could have makeshift popsicles.

And then school restarted, and Nuna had a new teacher this year called Mr Hardy, who was far less understanding and far less kind than Miss Cutler had been. Nuna found herself standing in the corner of the classroom at least twice a week for ‘sheer cheek’ (which was usually just reading under the desk when she shouldn’t because she had already done the second-grade work last year, but Mr Hardy didn’t seem to understand that). At the opposite end of things, Sandra had become a new class favourite of Mr Hardy’s. She was conscientious and polite, did the work quietly and on time without mistakes. Nuna was proud for her friend, but she couldn’t help feeling slightly annoyed that the blonde received all the praise, whilst she completed the same work and was punished.

The winter was as cold as the summer had been warm, and Mother fretted over sending Nuna to school every morning, fearing she would catch something.

“I should be there,” she said, eyes filling with tears (they did that a lot now). “I should be there to walk you to school in the mornings, to keep you safe. I can’t even afford to buy you a proper coat–“ Nuna tried surreptitiously to pull down the sleeves on her too-small jacket “–and you have to walk to school alone too. I’m a terrible mother.”

Father tried his best to console his sobbing wife, but she was not to be swayed. Life for the Shaw family had not gotten any easier, and Mother was busy almost constantly, locked in the bedroom with her pen and paper, sketching out drawing after drawing in an attempt to pay the ever-increasing bills. Father left the house early most mornings and often didn’t return until late at night, searching for work. It was all Nuna could do to try and stay out of the way of her stressed parents, hiding her blistered feet a size too big for her shoes, and constantly taking out the seams of her dresses to stop them becoming too small.

They made it through the winter, in the end – Nuna didn’t catch anything, Mother managed to keep their apartment, and they even procured a turkey for Christmas dinner somehow. When the new year celebrations began a week later, Nuna listened to the faint noise of chatter and laughter carry through the night air towards her small window and watched the fireworks explode across the sky. 

She dared to hope that the next year would be better than this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on the note of catching something, everyone stay safe from covid my children, social distance and self isolate and all that jazz xx


	3. Prologue III

If this year was going to turn out better than the last one, then sure it sure didn’t start like it. A surprise snowstorm had the entire street population freezing to the point that Father actually started burning their furniture to keep warm, and Nuna knew they weren’t the only ones. To make matters worse the pipes in their building froze over, and when the weather finally began to turn for the better as February began, they burst. It had been quite the shock when the six-year-old awoke one morning to find the room submerged ankle-deep in frigid water.

“At least it wasn’t me this time,” Nuna said to Mother in a weak attempt to cheer her up.

(Mother only look at her bleakly, before turning back to fiddle with the radio, scuffing her bare feet listlessly the water.)

At home, little had changed; Mother seemed to be fading faster than a ghost at this rate, floating through the house often still in her nightgown, and rarely speaking. Across the hall, their previous neighbours moved out unexpectedly when the man found a job as a shop clerk in Soho. 

(“Lucky bastard,” Father had muttered.)

There was talk of who would get the new lease – Mrs Gibson claimed that it was going to be her cousin, someone else said they'd seen a young couple entering and leaving the flat looking fairly pleased with themselves – but as it turned out, none of them were correct.

Mrs Grimsby was an elderly but stern woman of a sharp countenance. There were some rumours about how a lady such her, whose demeanour spoke of a good upbringing, had ended up in a place like this, but no one dared to gossip about Mrs Grimsby for long. Nuna liked her well enough; sometimes she would give the girl a penny for running down to the local newsagents for her paper and, unlike the previous tenants who were often heard having shouting matches at ungodly hours of the night (the walls here were thin), she was blessedly quiet.

The lowkey rivalry that had been building up between Nuna and Mr Hardy all year finally reached breaking point when he and Nuna got into a shouting match so fierce that it eventually culminated on the six-year-old accidentally setting his desk on fire. Perhaps there would’ve been more serious consequences if anyone could actually prove that she had been the cause of said fire but as it was, multiple eyewitnesses could attest to the fact that she had been standing at least five metres away when it started. As such, the only consequences were a stern conversation with the headmaster, and a transfer to a different second-grade class.

The teacher of her new form was one Miss Lawson, and she was far kinder than Mr Hardy had been – if slightly oblivious to her absolute terror of a class. Nuna was fairly certain that no one actually learned anything, because so much time was spent with kids starting riots. Within her first week there had already been three separate fist fights, Wesley Harlin had wasted an entire lesson by hiding Miss Lawson’s reading glasses in the paint cupboard, and Susan Grundy had thrown a meltdown of such epic proportions that it resulted in an entire wall display being torn down and ripped to shreds. All in all, life in Miss Lawson’s classroom was eventful, but not particularly fruitful, so Nuna got away with continuing to read her own books the entire lesson with little interruption.

If there were any downsides to her change in class, it was that she now saw Sandra even less often than before, with only an hour or so of playtime at lunch and fifteen minutes’ recess. They still read their books together, and Sandra still delighted in the sentience of her doll, but the move in classroom seemed to form a rift between them that Nuna wasn’t sure how to cross.

It was something of a relief when the school year ended, honestly. Her seventh birthday was spent the same as nearly every other day of that summer, running wild on the streets. They played baseball, and the memory of her teammates cheering her on as she ran home run after home run sent her to bed grinning for nights to come.  
Season changed, the wheel of the year turned, and school returned at last. Their new teacher was Mr Graves, whose attempts at controlling his students were commendable, but ultimately doomed. Nuna continued to devour book after book, doing her best to block out the yelling of her classmates as they chucked spitballs at each other and generally did a stellar impression of a flock of rowdy seagulls.

For the first time since Nuna moved here, there was a real street celebration for Halloween. Perhaps it was the fact that the economy had just taken another serious hit and everyone needed something to be cheerful about, but Stuart Conolly started selling pumpkins for a half shilling and folks bought them by the tens, which soon turned into a proper (and fairly intense) pumpkin carving competition. A group of kids went door to door trick or treating and Mrs Grimsby gave a sweetie to every child who was brave enough to knock.

Two weeks before Christmas, Father started coughing. He waved it off, at first – claiming it was nought but a bad cold and that he was absolutely fine. But within a few days he was bedridden, feverish and besieged by headaches. Mother fussed over him, bringing him sugared water and hot tea, and most days Nuna would arrive home from school to find Mother by his bedside, chatting away as she sketched on her notepad.

But then Mother got sick too.

And suddenly, both of her parents were lying in bed, coughs racking their body, and Nuna found that she simply didn’t have enough time in the day to go to school and do the grocery shopping and care for her worsening parents’ health. She gave the spare key to Mrs Grimsby and traded her a jug of sugar for coming round each hour to check up on them whilst she was in classes. When school let off for the winter holidays and the other kids went home to their warm hearths and stockings pinned to their mantles, Nuna returned to a stuffy apartment with an air of sickness that wouldn’t go away, no matter how many windows she opened.

(which wasn’t many, considering the frosty air that permeated London as midwinter approached.)

On Christmas day, Nuna slept in until noon before eventually dragging herself into her parents’ room to tend to them. As she pulled her hand away from Mother’s (too hot) forehead, she grabbed her daughter’s wrist weakly.

“You're… a good daughter, Nunziatina,” she whispered. “Far too good for me...”

Nuna felt her eyes fill with tears that she didn’t even try to wipe away.

When Nuna woke up on the 31st of December 1934, Nuna it was to find that Father had stopped breathing, and Mother was lying silently, eyes closed and in a state of such high fever that it burned to touch her.

“Mother?” she asked tentatively. “Mother, can you hear me?”

There was no response, but one of her hands twitched. Nuna grasped it like a lifeline, pulling it to her chest disregarding the heat. She let out a choked sob, leaning over to rest her head on the side of the bed as her shoulders shook.

Nuna sat by her Mother’s side for the whole day, never once leaving her. She read to her from the book of fairy stories that they gave her (so long ago), and when she ran out of those she kept talking, making up story after story, from her own childhood as well. She talked and talked, until her throat felt hoarse and raspy. She wasn’t even sure if Mother could hear her half the time, but she couldn’t bear the thought of Mother thinking she was all alone.

It was late evening when Mother opened her eyes one last time and locked eyes with Nuna. She didn’t say anything as her breathing slowed and her heart stopped, hand going limp in Nuna’s iron grip.

Nuna let it slide out of her clutches slowly, staring with disbelief into her mother’s glassy eyes. Her Mother. The woman who had raised her for seven long years, who had rocked her and soothed her when she first came screaming into this world, mind jumbled and confused. Who had picked her up when she fell down, read her stories, taught her how to boil water and tie her shoes and button her coat, who used to sing crooning lullabies to her on the nights where she couldn’t sleep. Her Mother who was now dead.  
Nuna didn’t cry, as she crawled onto the bed between her parents. Father had already gone stiff – dead people did that, she thought hazily, it was called Rigor Mortis – but she kissed his jaw anyway, smoothing out the curl of hair that always fell over his forehead like the forelock of a pony. He used to pretend that he was one, when she was little. He would snort and neigh loudly, pretending to prance around whilst she squealed in delighted laughter.

Mother was still soft, though, her arms warm and inviting as they always had been when Nuna would snuggle up to her in the evenings. The redhead traced the familiar features of Mother’s face, trying to memorise them. Her hands, calloused and rough from holding her pen but still so gentle, her mahogany hair that always gleamed like polish, the delicate curved nose – the only thing Nuna had in common with her – and the warm brown of her eyes. Nuna remembered how much she used to smile, back before Father lost his job, when they had just been a regular family with a house and a garden on a respectable street. Nuna used her thumb to gently lift Mother’s face into a small, peaceful smile.  
Nuna lay between her parents for the whole night, never leaving their side. That was where Mrs Grimsby found her in the morning, after she let herself into their flat with the spare key. She had walked into the bedroom and stopped short by the door, before putting one hand to her heart.

“Oh, child,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Nuna did not reply.

Mrs Grimsby guided her carefully off of the bed and out of the room, sitting her down by the table and quietly puttering about the kitchen. There was no food for breakfast in the cupboards, so she made tea for both of them instead (without milk, because the milk had long since gone off). Nuna didn’t touch it. She just sat, letting it grow cold before her as she stared blankly into space.

When Mrs Grimsby began to quietly enquire about any relatives who could take her, Nuna simply shook her head. It was ununsual, she knew; little Matthias Hughes down the road could talk about his Uncle Harry until the sky fell down, and even Sandra would occasionally mention her grandmother (usually with a scowl on her face, but that was neither here nor there). The one time Nuna had asked Mother about their family, she had gotten a strange look on her face, and changed the subject.

She still doesn’t speak when Mrs Grimsby began to pack up her belongings – the few meagre outfits, her hairbrush. She did stop her, however, when she made to pack Mister. The bear was making a valiant effort to stay still, though he occasionally twitched a single paw. Nuna laid him gently between her parents, shushing him gently as she settled him under the covers. Then she went to her Mother’s tiny jewellery box and pulled out a single thin silver chain. It took some exertion, but she managed to pry the wedding bands from their frozen fingers, slipping them onto the chain. She hung it around her neck and tucked it down her shirt, the cool metal brushing her chest, a permanent remidner. Then she closed their eyes, one at a time, and kissed them goodbye.

  


* * *

  


Mrs Grimsby was waiting for her, suitcase in hand. The older woman took one of Nuna’s small hands in her own and led her out of the apartment, locking it behind her. Truth be told, Nuna didn’t remember much of the journey that came next. The street felt too cold and too bright, the day felt too normal when her entire life seemed to have just been turned upside down. 

It was still early in the day, and the streets were deserted as people slept off their parties from the New Year’s night. They passed the corner shop and the school before the streets began to turn from the familiar buildings of her childhood into ones she couldn’t recognise. They must have walked for at lest an hour before Mrs Grimsby finally stopped short in front of a great wrought iron gate. Nuna looked up.

The sign was tattered yet imposing, bordering a great arched gate, with the words written above it in rusted letters:

  


WOOL’S ORPHANAGE

  


Mrs Grimsby didn't hesitate in pulling the iron latch free of its holder and Nuna wondered absently if she had been here before. The gate gave with an ominous creak, and they crossed the gravel yard towards the door, which was preceded by a large granite stoop.

The building itself was drab and old, devoid of any sign of life or warmth. Perhaps it was simply too early in the morning, but there was no sign of life from any of the numerous little windows that lined the face of the house, and Nuna felt an oddly oppressive air permeating the grounds. Mrs Grimsby thumped the heavy iron doorknocker, and it was answered by an aging woman with thin grey hair and stern eyes who introduced herself as the matron, Mrs Cole.

The hallways were panelled in dark wood, any light that filtered through the windows quickly being eaten by the shadows. Mrs Cole led them into a similarly dark room that was as bare as the rest of the place, the only furniture a single table and three spindly chairs. Mrs Grimsby didn’t stay for long – she declined the offer of tea, merely offering the matron a short explanation as to Nuna’s circumstances and then hastening to leave. She gave Nuna a quick pat on the forehead.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” she murmured. “You're a brave girl. Your parents would be very proud of you.”

And then she turned on one worn heel and strode out of the orphanage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not _especially_ happy with this chapter, but I wanted to get it out this weekend and I might go back and edit it later so...
> 
> We were actually meant to reach Wool’s in the last chapter, but then I felt obligated to give Sandra a character arc and for some reason I grew weirdly fond of Nuna’s parents, so I decided they needed more page time. Anyways, now that her backstory is done, we can move onto meeting actually canon people so yayyyy


	4. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [It's Nice To Have a Friend](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaP1VswBF28)   
> 

_January, 1935_

  


It wasn’t until Mrs Grimsby had long since disappeared down the corridor and out of the bleak front door that Nuna felt her mind begin to unfreeze from its shock.

She was… she was an orphan.

A dirt poor, faceless orphan with one suitcase of belongings to her name.

It felt almost unreal, that she everything could have gone so wrong so quickly. How long ago had it been that she was sitting in class trading jokes with Sandra, or holding makeshift tea parties with her bear by the fireplace? She had never known that bad things happened so fast – in books, it always seemed like the main character had chapters and chapters of plot with pages of foreshadowing, and that when the disaster finally happened, they were almost ready for it.

Nuna didn’t think she could ever have been ready for it.

Her gaze wandered up to meet Mrs Cole’s stern grey eyes, which were watching her with a severe but not unkind expression. Nuna felt rather like the woman was sizing her up. At last the matron seemed to come to some kind of decision, because she broke eye contact and turned away, nodding to herself.

“You’re a skinny one, aren’t you?” she asked, but in the kind of tone that Nuna knew wasn’t actually meant to be answered. “Still, that woman said you came from Hackney?”  
  
This was a question Nuna _was_ meant to answer, so she nodded mutely.

This seemed to please Mrs Cole, who jerked her head approvingly. “Then you’ll be no stranger to hard work,” she said. “That’s good. We expect the children to pull their weight around here.”

This sounded mildly alarming to Nuna, but before she could ask just what Mrs Cole had meant by that, the woman suddenly turned on her heel and started walking, making for the staircase that Nuna had passed on her way to the office. She seized her suitcase hastily, scurrying in an attempt to keep up with her long strides.

“I’ll show you to your room,” Mrs Cole said. “we’ve been full for a while, but we’ve a few spare now – this winter’s been a hard one, God bless.”

There were two more flights of stairs between the ground and Nuna’s new room, and by the time they reached it, the little girl felt quite disorientated by the maze of identical corridors. Every few metres along, a door would be set into the wall with a small brass number on it, and they must’ve passed at least twenty. The hallways were deserted. 

Mrs Cole finally came to halt beside a door like every other one, with a number 36 on it. With a rather violent twist of the doorknob (it didn’t seem to have been opened in a while and took several yanks before moving free) the door gave way and swung away from its frame, revealing the room inside.

It was bare and unfurnished, the only furniture a single narrow bed tucked into the right corner, a rickety chest of drawers and a large wardrobe made of the same dark wood as everything else, that seemed to loom out of the left wall like some kind of hulking shadow waiting to pounce. The wall was white plaster that had evidently seen better times, stained yellow in the corners and covered in a patchwork of scuff marks.

Nuna stepped into the room cautiously, running a hand over the thin blue bed covers. It had been a long time since she had her own bed.

“Well, I’ll leave you to get settled in,” Mrs Cole said at last. “If you need anything then you’ll be wanting to call either me, Miss Judith or Miss Martha.”

She thanked her quietly, sitting down on the bed as Mrs Cole bustled out of the room, shutting the door behind her and leaving Nuna alone on the third floor, in the thirty sixth room of Wool’s Orphanage.

Wool’s Orphanage.

Now why did that sound familiar?

It was a subtle kind of familiar, as if she had heard it long ago and then forgotten about it, only to be recalled if she really squinted. This wasn’t necessarily a strange thing in and of itself – people had said many things about Nuna Shaw, but her possession of a good memory was not among them. She certainly wasn’t stupid, but she could be… what was it Mr Hardy had always said? Air-headed? But no, this wasn’t like that. Her memories went far deeper than simply forgetting to bring in her homework or daydreaming in class – this was to the point where she almost felt as if she remembered the arch of the entrance, or the dark panelling of the walls. Everything about this place brought out a sense of déjà vu so strong she could almost taste it.

It was almost like she had been here before.

Shaking off the sudden sensation of unease, Nuna turned towards her suitcase and began unpacking her pitiful collection of belongings. It was almost depressing, how quickly Nuna had her clothes shoved into the narrow set of drawers and her various other belongings by the side of her bed. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was meant to do with her toothbrush, as Mrs Cole had neglected to inform her about the location of the bathroom. Or anything, really, but Nuna supposed that might have been her way of not overwhelming her latest, grieving charge. It was a rather thoughtful gesture, if slightly annoying as it meant that Nuna now had absolutely no idea what to do. She had taken a quick glance at the clock in the matron’s office before she had been herded up to her room and it had been barely past nine in the morning.

She considered her options from the relative comfort of the bed. She could leave her room and see if she could find any signs of life in this place, or at the very least a library (though she somehow doubted she would be finding the latter, unfortunately). This was the option that, on any other day, she would doubtless have taken – after all, she was the same baby who had taken every opportunity to escape the house from the moment she had learned to crawl, or so Mother says.

Would have said.

If she had still been–

Nuna’s thoughts immediately dimmed and the small smile that had been creeping onto her face dropped as her eyes welled up with tears all of a sudden. Although the initial haze of shock had worn off minutes ago Mrs Cole had been there, and Nuna was loath to cry in front of other people. Now, however, she was alone. More alone than she had ever been, in fact.

Her heart clenched and her shoulders hunched as she finally let out a quiet sob.

After that, it was as if she couldn’t stop. She cried for what felt like hours until the bed covers were soaked, and her body was curled up into a tiny ball. She cried until her face felt twice it’s normal size and her chest hurt from the effort of keeping her whimpers from accidentally summoning a concerned busybody who could see her like this. She cried until the sun had risen to the top of the sky and had begun to fall back down again.

Only then, after darkness had set in and she could feel the icy cold of the British winter emanating through the pane of her thin window, did Nuna unfold from her fetal position and sit up, disorientated and exhausted. Her eyes felt crusted with tears and she longed for a cloth of some kind to clean cheeks with, but she still had no idea where any kind of faucet was – there certainly wasn’t one in her room.

Squinting in the dusky light, she stumbled to her feet, scrubbing at her face. She fumbled around, searching for a lamp or light switch of some kind.

(though really, what were the chances that a place like this could afford had electricity for each of the individual rooms?)

Biting back words that she probably shouldn’t know but which ten-year-old boys and drunk neighbours liked to use all the time without thought of the young and impressionable ears that may be listening, Nuna turned reluctantly to the door. Looks like she would have to find her own way to the bathroom, then. 

Cautiously, the girl tugged the doorknob, applying a little extra force when it still didn’t budge. The door jerked open at last, and Nuna poked her head out warily. The corridor was dingy, but it was at least lit, the ceiling lined with lamps. It seemed to stretch on for unreasonably long, the row of identical doors extending in both directions. Picking a way at random, Nuna ventured out.

The bathroom turned out to be tucked away into a small nook just around the bend in the corridor. It wasn’t much to look at; two sections which diverged from each other, one labelled _Boys_ and the other _Girls_ with identical white ceramic sinks lined up along one wall in front of a smudged and cracked mirror, with toilet stalls along the opposite edge. Still, it was functional, at least, and Nuna had lived in an apartment with a far worse plumbing system.

She splashed the icy cold water onto her face, allowing the frigid temperature to cleanse her red eyes. There was a ragged white cloth tossed over one of the pipes near the end of the sinks, and Nuna used it to dab gingerly at her face. When she caught sight of her face in the mirror she paused.

Her skin, near deathly white at the best of times, seemed practically translucent, only further highlighted by the purple shadows underneath her eyes. Her stark orange hair, so much like her father’s, looked like someone had sent a bolt of lightning through it and she frantically combed her fingers through it in an attempt to wrestle it into some semblance of decency. Nuna gave her cheeks a small pinch to push some more colour into them. Satisfied that she no longer looked as if she had spent the entire day crying, Nuna nodded to herself and straightened, tilting her chin up in defiance.

_She would not let anyone see her pain._

She was barely three doors away from her own room again, when she froze. Faintly, but becoming louder, was the sound of hushed conversation.

From the pitch of the voices, she could tell that they must be children and for a moment, indecisiveness gripped her as she wrestled between making a mad dash back to her room and hoping no one saw her or facing the orphans who were to be her newest friends. In the end, her newly acquired shyness won out. Making a split-second decision, Nuna leapt into action, sprinting the last few metres for her room and yanking the door shut behind her, leaning against it and drawing a shaky breath. Not a moment later, there was the sound of footsteps rounding the corner at the end of the corridor and the level of chatter increased.

“That poor, _poor_ rabbit– ”

Another voice cut in. “What happened?”

“Didn’t you hear? Billy’s been crying about it all day.”

“You mean Stubbs? Let him cry, if you ask me…”

“I just don’t understand how it got there in the first place – who d’you reckon it was?”

“Isn’t it obvious? _He’s_ behind it, he always is–“

Someone shushed whoever had just spoken quickly.

They moved past her then, and Nuna sank to the ground, her legs shaking.

_Billy Stubbs._

_The rabbit._

_Rafters?_

The image of Mrs Cole, a few years older than she was just now, flashed through her mind.

_“Billy Stubbs’s rabbit… well, Tom said he didn’t do it and I don’t see how he could have done, but even so, it didn’t hang itself from the rafters, did it?”_

Nuna frowned, wondering where that had come from. The feeling was similar to the one she had felt earlier – that same sense of dizzying recognition. She couldn’t help but feel as if she was missing something hugely important, but what it could be she didn’t know. What was it about Wool’s Orphanage that called to her long-distant memory? And just who the hell was Tom?

The knock on the door jerked her out of her thoughts with all the subtlety of a freight train, and she scrambled to her feet, hurriedly dusting of her skirt and tugging the door open. A woman – more like a girl, really – with a pale face and limp mousy hair was standing on the other side.

Nuna stood back awkwardly, opening the door a little wider. “Er, hello.” She said.

The girl gave her a once over (Nuna wondered briefly if she had learnt it from Mrs Cole) before sniffing haughtily. “Nuna Shaw, the new orphan, I presume?” The way she said her name immediately set Nuna on edge. It was the same way that some of her old teachers would say it – with disgust at the idea that someone, god forbid, have a name that _wasn’t_ British.

“Yes,” Nuna replied, hoping none of her attitude showed on her face.

“Yes, _Miss,_ ” the girl replied snootily, causing Nuna’s opinion of her to slide down a few more notches. “Miss Martha. I’m the matron’s assistant – she sent me to fetch you down for tea.”

“Oh. That’s… very nice of you,” Nuna replied hesitantly, suddenly thrown. “Miss,” she added hastily, as Martha’s face soured. 

She sniffed, before turning away down the corridor. “Follow me, then,” Martha said without glancing back, causing Nuna to rush after her, jamming the door to her room shut hastily.

Martha remained silent for a few seconds, before eventually starting to speak again. “I don’t suppose Mrs Cole’s told you any of the thing’s expected of you whilst you’re here?”

“No, Miss Martha,” Nuna replied truthfully.

Martha sighed. “I’d better do it, then,” she said, as if she couldn’t possibly imagine anything more taxing than having to explain a few house rules to a seven-year-old. “You get three meals a day, whilst you’re here,” she explained. “Well, most of the time, anyway. Sometimes we have to skip breakfast, but that hasn’t happened in a while, and I don’t expect we’ll have to worry about that this year. Breakfast is at seven thirty – and Mrs Cole likes the orphans to be up by quarter to – else she can get mighty cross.

“After that, there’s your morning chores to be done – you know, laundry, mopping, cleaning the lavvies… stuff like that. Orphans have to pull their weight around here.” She glanced at her charge as if hoping she would complain, but Nuna forced herself to keep a straight face. Chores didn’t sound too bad – after all, no one needed to know that with a little bit of help from her abilities, she could have a floor mopped in ten minutes flat.

Evidently disappointed by the lack of reaction, Martha continued and Nuna listened and hummed along when it was appropriate. 

According to Martha, after the morning chores were done, the children usually went to the small swing of schoolrooms where they were to stay from nine until twelve, take an hour for lunch and then be back to school until three. After school, they had to do the _evening_ chores and then they were free to play until tea which was at seven (generally, though Sarah, the cook, was apparently behind schedule most days). Lastly there was an hour for the younger ones – of which she was supposedly one – to do as they wished, before being sent to bed. 

“Course, it’s the holidays just now, so that schedule’s more or less out the window,” Martha said, sounding deeply disapproving. “Ridiculous, if you ask me” (No one had, but Nuna didn’t feel it wise to point that out), “leaving you kids to run wild. Not proper.”

“How many others are there? Kids, I mean.” Nuna asked curiously.

“Well, I think we have a little under fifty other orphans at the moment, and then there’s me, Mrs Cole, Sarah and Judith, bless them. You’ll have a teacher as well, of course, but our last one left just before Christmas.”

Nuna nodded, absorbing the information as best she could. Martha came to a sudden stop. They had reached the bottom floor and were now standing at the back of a large throng of children, most of them dressed in the same grey, threadbare uniform. Their ages seemed to vary from as young as four to as old as sixteen, and everything in between. A few spared her curious looks, but the majority didn’t even seem to notice her arrive, too caught up in whatever conversation they were having. If she strained her ears, Nuna was sure she could still catch whispers of ‘Billy’ ‘rabbit’ ‘rafters’ and _‘Him’._

“I’ll leave you, then,” Martha said, giving Nuna a gentle nudge. “Hop along, now.”

Nuna hopped.

* * *

She soon lost Maratha’s face in the crowd of grey-clothed orphans, who appeared to be waiting to be allowed into the dining room. In her faded floral print dress, she felt rather out of place in the sea of monochrome.

From ahead, she heard the sound of a door opening, before Mrs Cole’s voice rose above the din.

“Alright, children! In you go – _quietly,_ please, if you don’t mind. Eddie, stop shoving!”

Slowly, the mob of orphans began to thin out, moving as one towards the dining room and sweeping Nuna along with them like leaves down a river.

Then she caught sight of a pair of dark brown eyes and she stopped short.

He had black hair, somewhat curlier than she had expected it to be, but neatly parted down the middle all the same. His face already showed signs of the heartbreaker he would surely be when he was older, even though it was currently set in a heavy glare. He was… he was…

_“Tall for his age,”_ that small, annoying part of her mind put in unhelpfully.

He was deeply, inexplicably familiar, and somehow Nuna knew instantly who it was she was looking at.

He had noticed her watching him, his glare turned on her now. There was a look of hidden curiosity in his eyes, too, as if he was sizing her up and trying to figure out jut what this strange, _unknown_ girl was doing in his orphanage.

Something seemed to guide her then, something odd and instinctive, when she smiled at him and said “Hello, Tom Riddle.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, an expression of wary confusion clouding his handsome features. Nuna was barely aware of the urge guiding her mouth to form her words, but they fell confidently all the same. “Happy birthday.”

_Although technically,_ her brain supplied, _that was yesterday._

Before the flow of orphans pulls them apart again, Nuna relishes in the look of pure shock that crosses his face.

  


* * *

For the first time in a long while, Nuna dreamed of the Accident.

  


* * *

  


_She was driving, she thought she might be crying, and her vision was blurred and her foot on the accelerator was pressing down harder and harder–  
  
But it was different this time. Images flitted across her vision, a jumble of people and sights that passed so quickly she couldn’t keep track. A man with a long, white beard and spectacles, blue eyes glinting with hidden knowledge, a young boy, barely older than herself and with eyes the colour of fresh leaves as he cried in the darkness, a woman with crazed black hair running through shadowed hallways, face twisted with cruel glee._

_And then suddenly Tom was there, his eyes as hard and cold as they had always been, but glistening the crimson red of fresh blood. He opened his mouth and when he spoke, it was not with the voice of a child but of a snake._

_“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things – terrible, yes… but great.”_

_There was a flash of white, the bright glare of headlights in front of her and she was never going to swerve in time–_

_“I can make animals move without training them…”_

_A girl with auburn hair pleaded for her life, a man turned into a rat and the leaf-eyed boy drove a bloodied fang into the front of a back diary._

_“Greatness inspires envy, you must know this–“_

_There wasn’t even a chance to brace for impact, only the screeching of tyres and the shattering of glass, the crunch of metal–_

_“It is our choices that show us what we truly are–“_

_“It's... It's magic what I can do?”_

_A forest, a courtyard, a castle–_

_“Avada kedavra!”_

_Then she was lying on the asphalt ground, grit digging into her skin and rain pounding down on her face and she was in so much pain pain pain_ pain **pain–**

_“They do not call me ‘Tom’ anymore–“_

_“…I can make the hurt, if I want…”_

_Tom was leaning over her now, his red, red eyes watching her, judging her. “Would you save me?” he hissed, in that cold, high voice. “You know what I’m going to become… what I have already been. Would. You. Save. Me?”_

_That familiar, all-encompassing darkness returned, blotting her vision slowly until only two circles of red remained, burning like hot coals against the pitch black._

_“There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.”_

_I_

_am_

_Lord-----_

_**“Voldemort is my past, present and future.”** _

  


* * *

  


There was light.

  


* * *

  


The day following Tom’s eighth birthday began almost the exact same as every other day he had ever lived did.

Which was to say, Martha woke him up by banging a veritable symphony on his door, yelling that _it was seven ‘o’ clock, Tom Riddle and if you don’t haul yourself to breakfast this very instant, there’ll be no tea for a week._

And everything had progressed from there.

After breakfast, he and the other boys had been sent out to Sarah’s pathetic excuse for a herb garden to pull the weeds – what few were growing in midwinter, anyway. The other boys had kept shooting him wary glances, as if they expected him to start hanging _them_ from the rafters, too. That made him laugh silently; that he could so easily make these boys, these children fear him. On the outside he had ignored them, refusing to even look at them. As if they weren’t even deserving of his attention. But on the inside, he revelled in their every glance and mutter. Because he was Tom Riddle, and he was _noticed._

At lunch, he could hear Amanda Lee (she really isn't as quiet as she thinks she is) telling Katie Porter in hushed tones about the Incident, as everyone has taken to calling it.  
  
(Tom doesn’t care. He lets them talk. Billy Stubbs deserved what he got.)

His day is the exact same as every day he has ever lived up through the afternoon, too. It had been similarly dull, though for entirely different reasons. Christmas meant that the orphans had managed to escape anymore chores, so he retreated to his room and sat, rereading the boring, mundane books he had stolen from the schoolroom, before the teacher had resigned and term had ended early (as they did every year).

He couldn’t even remember the name of this last one; they never lasted long enough for him to bother, anyway. No teacher wanted to stay in a place as grim as Wool’s Orphanage. It was no wonder that half of the kids in the primary school could barely string a sentence together on paper.

But Tom was different. He knew he was different, he knew that he was _better._ When the others laboriously scratched _the c-a-t sat on the m-a-t_ over and over again into their workbooks, Tom would write pages and pages filled with his small, neat handwriting. He could perform sums after sums of arithmetic, recite every one of the French verb endings and memorise an entire textbook of information in one read.

Because he was different. _Special._

**(Better. Different. Special.)**

And as such, he had read every single one of the books in the schoolroom multiple times, but there was nothing for him to do but just keep rereading them, time and time again, searching desperately for something, _anything_ that he had missed. He longed for something new, something challenging but Mrs Cole would never bother to buy anything so ‘frivolous.’ Tom sneered; the old hag could barely read any better than half of the orphans themselves.

People were still talking about him when he finally emerged from his room hours later to go to tea. he ignored them for the most part, but when he happened to catch the eye of one boy who promptly turns away and starts jabbering to his friend frantically, he had to roll his eyes. Did they think they were subtle?

His day is the exact same as every day he has ever lived up until the moment he meets _Her_. She is unfamiliar, just another faceless orphan, but a new one. One who he has never, ever seen before and that is enough to make him notice her. He has lived here all of his life, after all; he knows the face of each and every orphan that has walked these halls. But this girl, she is new and _different._

Different.

Different like him?

And she only becomes more different when she tilts her head to the side and offers him a bright smile and then says “Hello, Tom Riddle. Happy birthday.”

Different like him.

**(Better. Different. Special.)**

The crowd swallows her up after that and Tom is left to stare at where she had been in shock.

He rose the next morning before any of the matrons could come and wake him themselves, but if it was because he had been hoping to see Her (it hadn’t), he was sorely disappointed. She didn’t appear at breakfast time and almost immediately afterwards, he was escorted away with the other boys again.

Martha had them mopping the hallway floors and she must’ve been feeling especially irritable that day, because she didn’t let them leave for hours. By the time lunch time had come and Martha had sniffily declared his efforts to be satisfactory, Tom’s limbs were burning, and he was scowling something fierce. If the stupid woman had just _turned her back for one second_ then he could have had the floor clean in two seconds with his power.

It frustrated Tom, because he was just so much _better_ than these people. 

**(Better. Different. Special.)**

One day, they would see that.

By the time Tom and the other younger boys reached the dinner hall, the other orphans had already eaten and left. They were finally released from Martha’s grouchy control and shooed outside to do… whatever it was Mrs Cole thought orphans could play two days into January when the ground is still covered in ice and taking your hands out of your pockets for too long could turn them blue.

Tom scowled from his position leant against the orphanage wall when a gaggle of children rushed past him playing some insipid game of tag, the force of their movement shoving cold air into Tom’s face. Would Mrs Cole really notice if he were to sneak back inside… ?

The thought was swept from his mind when he turned his head slightly and finally caught sight of a familiar figure.

She was sitting against the far wall, near where the straggly hawthorn bushes were planted and well separated from the rest of the children by the makeshift football pitch, where a gaggle of the older boys were kicking a battered football around. It is, as it happens (and as it crosses his mind with a flicker of irritation), the place that Tom usually goes.  
  
When he neared her he could see that she was cross legged, dressed in clothes as threadbare (if slightly more colourful) as his own and too-small shoes. She couldn’t have been any older than him, he is sure – if anything perhaps even a little younger. Her hair was… possibly the brightest thing in the orphanage – it shone a few shades off of ginger, not quite blonde but not quite true red. In fact, everything about her seemed to be just _too much_ for this monochromatic orphanage, from her hair to her turquoise eyes, unusually large and wideset. Currently, they were watching the boys play, though Tom could see the slightly detached quality to her gaze, almost as if she wasn’t really seeing them but rather thinking of something else. When her head snapped up towards him, however, there was no trace of vacancy in them.

**(Better. Different. Special.)**

She grinned, revealing sharp teeth. “Hi, Tom,” she said cheerfully. Tom narrowed his eyes but didn’t reply. Seemingly not at all put off by his demeanour, the redhead continued. “My name’s Nuna – Nuna Shaw. I realised that I didn’t actually introduce myself yesterday. Is Tom short for anything?”

She looked at him expectantly. Tom didn’t say anything, his mind trying desperately to come up with some sort of response but finding itself unable to formulate a reply. When several seconds passed and it became clear that Tom had no intention of answering, the girl – or Nuna – shrugged, before continuing.

“Happy birthday again, by the way. I know I technically got the date wrong since it was actually the day before yesterday, but it didn’t really flow to say ‘oh, happy birthday for yesterday, Tom,’ so I had just gone with pretending it was the first. You don’t mind, do you?”

Tom knew he was staring, but he really couldn’t help it. This was without a doubt the most bizarre conversation he had ever had with someone. At last, his brain caught up with him. “Who are you?” he demanded. And then “how do you know…” Tom struggled for a moment. “All that?” he finished lamely.

Nuna grinned again. “I’d have thought you’d already’ve guessed,” she said mildly. 

__**Better. Different. Special. Better. Different. Special. Better different special-**  
  
  
  
  


_“Magic.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an English essay that’s worth like fifty percent of my final grade due in like a week, and instead of writing it I’m sitting here making Harry Potter fanfiction, so yeah I’m doing great thank you for asking
> 
> seriously tho, I am so, so sorry that this took over a month to post. I am an idiot of epic proportions with a severe case of Procrastination and I am genuinely considering giving up on life and becoming a slug person.


	5. Chapter 2

_January, 1935_

The day dawned cold over London that day, unveiling the frost on the windows and pale, icy blue of the sky in harsh light. Few people were out on the streets – it was a Saturday – and even fewer were anywhere other than the shopping districts, but if someone had found themselves on Wool Road, that cold, wintry Saturday, they would have passed an unremarkable orphanage, locked behind iron and stone.

Faintly, they may have been able to hear the faint echo of children’s laughter from the playground.

Said playground was small and crowded, a football pitch crammed into the corner, the lines sketched in with white chalk.

Beyond the pitch, hidden in the mass of orphans playing skipping and hopscotch and ball, two young children sat behind the hawthorn bushes, hunched over a book that was far too big for them. Occasionally one would turn the page. They do not speak.

The day is still cold. But it is getting warmer.

“They always sit with each other…“

“I heard from Amy that she came from the circus, like his mother–“

“Maybe she’s his sister?”

“Not with that hair, she’s not.”

“Perhaps he cursed her–“

Today marked three weeks since Nuna Shaw arrived in the care of Wool’s Orphanage, and whispers had followed her around for approximately all of them.

  


* * *

  


The book was old, a heavy tome with its spine broken and jacket cover torn like most of the few the orphanage owned. Emblazoned across the front were the words _Ptolemy’s Complete Guide to the Heavens_. Why a place like Wool’s – where the vast majority of its inhabitants were destined to become factory workers anyway – was in possession of such a book Nuna wasn’t sure. She had found it tucked away in a corner of the senior’s classroom, slipped around the back of the shelves by an orphan who couldn’t be bothered to find the correct place for it on the alphabetically ordered bookcase.

Nuna knew that Tom was a fairly voracious reader anyway (though _how_ she knew that was still a point of debate) but she doubted even he would’ve given this book so much as a glance if she hadn’t happened to mention the other day that wizards memorised the patterns of the sky and used it to time their spells and rituals right.

The night of her… dream? Nightmare? _Vision?_ she had lain awake, tossing and turning and trying to think, trying to remember what she could about… everything. Tom Riddle. Hogwarts (or was it Pigfarts?). The man with a face like a snake who seemed to be Tom, but not Tom at the same time.

There were things she remembered clearly, like the family of redheaded boys who lived in a house that looked like it had been assembled with the instruction manual upside down and written in ancient Greek, or the place called Diagon Alley with shops selling potions and broomsticks and wands. Or the dragon that was chained to the walls underneath a bank.

(sometimes, she wondered if she was just making these things up).

There was a stern professor in green who turned into a cat, a pack of flying black horses and a woman who dressed all in pink and inspired such a deep feeling of hatred within Nuna that she half wondered if the woman had committed arson or something.

Still, distracting herself with thoughts of magic was far preferable to thinking of, say, her parents. She couldn’t help it sometimes – her mind would drift away to the morning that she had walked into that bedroom and found her father, eyes glassed over and expression vacant…

Anyway.

The point is, she knew now why she had never been _normal_. Why she made lights appear from nowhere and objects come to life and, maybe, why she remembered a time before she was born.

Magic.

It seemed there was a whole world of it, one that she had seen before in a time long past, and Tom acted as a kind of lynchpin for those memories.

The boy in question was almost childishly excited by the idea of a wizarding world (despite him being a child, it still felt odd to refer to anything about Tom Riddle as remotely childlike, to the point where when he _did_ actually act his age, Nuna felt obligated to point it out). He plied her with questions about wands and curses (should she be concerned?) and dragons and everything else he could possibly think of. The idea that there was somewhere where he belonged, other people who were like him amongst whom he would no longer be a _freak_ , was an appealing one.

She understood that, in a way. Nuna hadn’t been at this orphanage long, but already she had seen first-hand the kind of treatment Tom – and by extension, herself – received. Granted, a fair amount of this treatment came as a reaction to Tom’s own questionable behaviour (she had weaselled the rabbit story out of him and, really, killing innocent animals like that? Absolutely not on), but Nuna also recognised the actions of a boy provoked. She had watched the same thing happen countless times in the schoolyard of her childhood – boys in particular liked to shove each other around when they got jealous. 

She remembered little Colin Westfield, the best mathematician in all of second grade – besides her of course, but she had never let on and no one ever asked – and the way the others would shove him around not because he was weak, but because he had _talent._

Such was the cruelty of children, except unlike most victims, Tom had the power to fight back.

With time, Nuna knew, that power would have grown to become true malice, and later hatred. Could she change that? _Was_ she changing that, by her mere presence? She certainly didn’t catch any inkling of a friend to help him in the other Tom’s past.

 _Time will tell,_ she thought, idly turning the next page.

  


* * *

  


_“It’s a school,” she whispered._

_They were lying on their backs in the field, staring up into the branches of the beech tree above them. The shade was welcome in the heat of a South England midsummer. It was the annual trip out of the city, and they had escaped Martha’s grasp at last; she was far too busy trying to wrangle the other orphans into submission to worry about two errant charges._

_Tom frowned. “Like the schoolroom?”_

_“Nothing like that,” Nuna said. “It’s like a castle. A huge castle, with towers and a forest and a great hall with a ceiling that looks like the sky.”_

_“What do they teach?”_

  


* * *

  


_August, 1935_

“Tom! _Tom!_ ”

Tom ignored the voice calling him, focusing his attention on his small black marble in front of him. 

(It was not really his; it was Connor O’Leary’s and before that it had been Andrew Smith’s, but few things in the orphanage stayed with their owners. The inhabitants were far too impecunious for that.)

Currently, it was hovering about half a foot off of the ground spinning gently in the air.

“Hey!” Nuna snapped a finger in his face and the marble fell to the table with a clatter. Tom scowled, resisting the urge to throw the thing at her.

“What,” he ground out, turning his head to see her standing imperiously in his bedroom doorway.

“Martha says you’ve to go help Cal and Sid clean the windows.”

The thousand-mile glare he sent her had no apparent effect, as she merely turned away dismissively. 

“And you really shouldn’t do stuff like that with the door open, you know,” she added over her shoulder. “Martha would have a fit.”

In fact, nothing really seemed to have an effect on Nuna; she was as unshakeable as they come – a trait he could grudgingly admire. Tom wasn’t stupid; he knew that her alliance with him was at a cost to her.

He considered that in his mind as he scrubbed at the windows with a ragged cloth, the nervous glances of Cal and Sid wearing into his back. The other children barely spoke to her – and when they did, it was with barely concealed contempt mixed with fear.

And yet still, she didn’t turn her back on him, as he had expected her to. Every morning she sat beside him in the dining room and chattered away ceaselessly as they ate their lumpy porridge, stayed by his side through tedious lessons in the schoolroom and sneaked into his room in the evenings. She paid no mind to their whispers and glares. She took it all, the dislike and the disgust, because, as she said to him when he had once mentioned it, _“I don’t need their approval. I have you.”_

That had made him inordinately pleased, the idea that his approval could be so important.

Her constant talking verged on annoying sometimes, as did her hopelessly upbeat demeanour, but he was far less likely to be bothered by other orphans with her around and, most importantly of all, she had the knowledge he so desperately wanted.

(He hadn’t been certain if he believed her, at first – how could she know so much about magic? she didn’t mention her parents much, but they had been ordinary, as far as he knew. If they were wizards, then they had to be pretty bad ones to have gotten themselves killed like that and leave their daughter in a mundane orphanage.

But the more she spoke and the more she told him, and the more what she said remained consistent every time, them more Tom believed. She was either the best liar he had ever known, or she was telling the truth. But if she _was_ lying, then why would she set a time limit on her lie by claiming they would go to Hogwarts at eleven?)

And she wasn’t _unpleasant_ company for the most part – she was intelligent, the only other person who could match him in schoolwork (though she seemed to have a serious problem remembering to include the letter ‘u’ in her words for some reason) and gave such droll commentary on the other orphans sometimes that his sides ached from laughing.

He was so lost in thought, that he barely even noticed the boy standing and observing him until he had stepped down from the rickety stepladder, dirty rag in hand.

“Denis,” Tom acknowledged, lips curling into a sneer at the boy in front of him.

Only two years or so older than Tom, Denis Bishop was a rather unintimidating specimen of a boy with straw coloured hair and watery blue eyes, neither especially tall nor especially short (Tom, who was rather tall for his age, actually dwarfed him by several inches). But what he lacked in height he more than made up for in the stockiness of his chest and shoulders, as well as general aggressiveness. Currently, his face was set in a defiant sneer and Tom immediately felt tense anticipation begin to form in his stomach.

“Tommy,” Denis replied. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

Tom twitched in irritation. “Don’t call me that.”

He immediately realised his mistake when a triumphant look passed over Denis’s face. “Call you what? Tommy? Why not, Tommy?”

Tom clenched his fists and tried not to do anything rash. The other two boys had stopped working to watch them now, and he wasn’t sure that he could get away with hurting Denis with two witnesses.

“Leave me alone,” he ground out. “You know you’ll regret it.”

But Denis was emboldened now. He knew as well as Tom knew that the other boy wouldn’t do anything outright in front of Cal and Sid. “Or what?” he challenged. “I don’t have a rabbit that you can torture like you did to Billy. Everyone knows you did it – because you’re a _freak!_ ” he practically spat the last word at Tom.

“At least I have a talent,” he replied tightly, though his heart was pounding. “At least I can read and write without giving myself a migraine. At least I’m actually worth the air I breathe. At least I have a future. You? You have _nothing_.” He sneered.

He barely had time to regret those words before Denis gave an enraged roar, lunging for Tom. But before he could reach him, an invisible force knocked him back, sending him sprawling to the ground a few feet away. He climbed to his feet, swearing.

“I hate you!” he snarled. “I hate you! Everyone does. You and that bitch, you think you're so much better than us. You're both going to hell!”

He turned around, shooting Tom an obscene gesture as he ran away, kicking over the bucket of soapy water as he did so.

Silence reigned for a minute as no one dared to move. Cal and Sid were both frozen, cloths in their hands.

Tom stayed where he was, watching the water congeal on the dirt.

  


* * *

  


He skipped lunch that day, choosing instead to sit in his room, clenching and unclenching his fists in his lap as he stared bleakly out of the window. 

He longed for Hogwarts so much that it hurt; for the world Nuna had told him about where he could be more than just the strange, outcast freak who everyone feared. He used to take pleasure in that fear, but now he wondered if perhaps what he had really taken pleasure in had been the power.

_(he didn’t feel powerful now.)_

Tom had always wanted more than the orphanage. But now more than ever, every bone in his body ached to leave this place.

He found Nuna kneeling outside by the gutter, her hands cupped around something small and black. Upon closer inspection, he realised that it was a small spider, no bigger than a penny. 

Tom wrinkled his nose. Whilst he wasn’t _afraid_ of insects, and had no issue flattening them whenever he found them in his room, he had never particularly liked them. And he had _definitely_ never let them run across his hands like that. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I heard what Denis did,” she said instead of answering, her face blank and her tone undecipherable. “He was bragging about it all lunch when you didn’t show.”

Tom watched her mutely. Nuna didn’t say anything else, instead proffering her spider-filled hand to him. “Cute, isn't he?” she said, her demeanour switching from unreadable to cheerful in seconds. Tom wondered if she was seriously expecting him to answer that. “bit small, though.”

Suddenly, the creature began to grow, doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size until it was nearly larger than both her hands together and caused Tom to reel back in surprise and alarm. Setting the spider down on her lap for a moment, Nuna pulled what Tom recognised as a mason jar (probably stolen from the kitchen, Sarah would be furious) out of her coat and scooped the spider into it, securing the lid and hiding it back under her clothes.

“What. Are. You. Doing,” he repeated.

“You’ll see,” she said nonchalantly. Suddenly, she tapped his shoulder and raced off. “Race you back to my room!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Whoever loses has to concede that they're the worse magician!”

Tom scowled. He would _not_ give in to this stupid, childish, _degrading_ goading–-

“You’re on, Shaw!” he called back, sprinting to make up lost distance.

“Prepare to lose, Riddle!”

  


* * *

  


_(They never spoke about where her knowledge came from. Tom burned with curiosity, of course, but she had never volunteered the information, and somehow he wasn’t sure she would give him a straight answer even if he asked. He didn’t want to risk ruining their alliance, not when there was clearly so much left that he didn’t know.)_

  


* * *

  


He _did_ see. At dinner that evening, from along the rows of quiet orphans, Denis screamed as if he had been electrocuted, leaping up from his seat. “Spider!” he screeched.

A stir went through the other children, and Tom immediately turned to look at Nuna. She didn’t meet his gaze, instead watching on with exaggerated innocence. Tom wasn’t fooled; he could see the twitch in the side of her mouth as she struggled not to smile.

 _“What_ is this fuss about?” demanded Mrs Cole, rushing down to see Denis, who was frantically checking over his shirt, as if he expected to see the spider pop out of his sleeve.

“T-There was a spider, Miss,” he said shakily. A ripple of laughter ran through the orphans and Mrs Cole scowled, unimpressed.

“A spider! Well, really! This is an orphanage, Denis, of course there’s spiders! That’s no reason to jump up screaming bloody murder every time you happen to see one!”

“But it was huge!” he protested, cupping his hands for her to see. “It was this big, I swear!”

“Stop exaggerating,” she snapped, before pushing him roughly back into his seat. “So help me, another peep from you and you can go straight to bed.” 

The orphans settled back down again, some of them jeering at Denis as he sat there miserably, ears burning. Tom hid his own smirk, looking over at Nuna. She shot him a mischievous grin, nudging his side lightly. 

That would have been the end of it, if it weren’t for Denis screaming again only a few minutes later, scrambling up from the table.

“What is it this time?” Mrs Cole demanded.

“There is a spider, Mrs Cole, I’m not lying,” he said. “I-It ran over my leg!”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” the matron said furiously. “Let me have a look, then, if you keep making such a fuss. And if this is a joke, then you’ll regret it,” she warned. Gathering her skirts, she knelt down by the edge of the table, searching the ground. The other children all leaned in curiously, whilst Denis stood back wringing his hands.

Mrs Cole stood up again, a tiny spider in one palm, so small that Tom could barely see it from his place down the table. “Ah yes, a _huge_ spider Denis, truly,” she barked, glaring at the boy. Around him, the other orphans were all laughing openly now. Mrs Cole continued, “For that, you can go to bed right away. Go on! Go!”

Cheeks flaming, Denis turned and fled.

“Denis is deathly afraid of spiders,” Nuna whispered gleefully later. “Did you see Mrs Cole’s face after I turned it back? I almost lost it!”

“Why did you do it?” Tom asked, still soaking in the feeling of satisfaction as he remembered Denis’s face. He was almost jealous of Nuna for thinking it – he would never have  
considered getting back at Denis like that. But public humiliation, he mused, was almost a better punishment for someone as boastful as Denis than stealing or physical pain could ever be.

Nuna looked at him as if he had just asked her why two plus two was four. “Because he insulted you,” she said slowly.

Tom blinked in surprise. “You did it for me?” he said stupidly.

“Well of course I did it for you, Tom,” she said, rolling her eyes as if that was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. “You're my friend.”

He would deny the warm feeling that sprung up in his chest at those words until his dying day.

  


* * *

  


_She smiled at him, eyes meeting above the small, broken toy soldier._

_“The word is_ **Reparo.”**

  


* * *

  


“Where are we going?” Nuna sounded more bemused than anything else as she trailed after him.

“The playground. Where does it look like?” he replied snarkily, not bothering to glance back.

She huffed, not sounding particularly offended. “Watch it, Tommy.”

Tom scowled at her then, shooting her a look that would have incapacitated a lesser person. But not Nuna; she only smiled sweetly, skipping forward until she was in step with him. He didn’t immediately brush away the twinge of fondness he felt at that thought.

When they reached the yard, Tom made a beeline for their usual hideout. The hawthorns had grown more than usual this year, and he struggled slightly to part them with his hands as he scanned the undergrowth.

“So, uh, what are you looking for?” Nuna asked awkwardly, when it became clear that Tom wasn’t going to be filling her in anytime soon.

“A snake,” he said absently, still combing through the bush. At last he gave up with a frustrated sigh. He could simply have called for one, of course – there was usually at least a few slithering around here somewhere – but it always looked much more impressive if he picked up the snake and then talked to it. Now he had to give up the game early.

(part of his mind asked him why he cared about looking impressive in front of Nuna in the first place. He elected to ignore it.)

 _“Is there anyone there?”_ he said. Beside him, Nuna swivelled her head to stare at him. He felt a stab of satisfaction at her shocked expression – she was always the one to shock him, with her stories about magic. It felt good to finally be the one with the advantage.

Only a few seconds later, there was a rustling by his feet, and a small adder emerged from the bushes.

 _“Small speaker?”_ it asked. _“You have returned.”_

 _“Black Tail,”_ Tom greeted the snake, extending an arm for him to crawl onto. _“I wanted to introduce you to someone.”_

Black Tail recoiled slightly. _“Are they loud?”_ he asked nervously.

 _“Only sometimes,”_ Tom said truthfully. He turned back to Nuna, who was still staring at him as if she’d never met him before. “This is Black Tail,” he offered. “He doesn’t like loud things, so if you could stay quiet around him, that would be great.”

She continued to gape.

When the silence was starting to get uncomfortable, Black Tail shifted. _“You’re right, they are nice and quiet,”_ he said. _“Come take me closer. I wish to meet them.”_

“He says he wants to meet you,” Tom said. 

“You can… talk to them?” Nuna said tentatively.

Tom nodded. 

“Wicked,” she breathed, before stepping closer. “Can I touch him?”

Tom relayed this question to Black Tail and when he hissed an affirmative, he nodded. She stepped forward, gently running a hand down his back. The adder hissed happily. _“This one is nice,”_ he said to Tom, sliding off of his arm and onto those of a delighted Nuna, who cooed at him.

Tom scowled. Traitor.

“Have you always been able to talk to snakes?” Nuna asked curiously.

“Since I can remember,” he said. “I didn’t tell you before. You never mentioned it, when you were talking about magic. I didn’t know if you knew.” _I didn’t trust you to know._

“Why are you showing me now?” Nuna asked, letting Black Tail wind back down her arm and onto Tom’s wrist.

_Because you got back at Denis for me. Because you didn’t abandon me. Because you're my friend, even if I wasn’t always yours._

Tom steadfastly ignored her eyes. “Because I’m your friend.” He tried not to sound nervous. 

Nuna didn’t reply right away, and when he dared steal a glance at her, he realised – to his horror – that she seemed dangerously close to tears. 

Just as he was considering dropping the snake and leaving him to fend for himself, she seemed to compose herself.

She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Oh. Thanks, Tom. It means… a lot.” 

He nodded, not daring to say anything that could set her off. He’d been around a lot crying children before – had caused a fair few of their tears, though he wasn’t necessarily proud of it – but he’d never actually had to _comfort_ one before. That was what friends were meant to do.

And Tom had never had friends. He had never wanted them. But perhaps… perhaps he would make an exception for Nuna.

When he looked at her, he saw her eyes had cleared, and she was now watching Black Tail wind his way around Tom’s shoulders with a pensive expression on her face. “Hey Tom,” she began cautiously. “D’you think you could teach me?”

  


* * *

  


_“Try again,” Tom said patiently. Well, patiently on the outside, at least. On the inside he winced as the raspy sound of Nuna’s terribly accented Parseltongue assaulted his ears._

_**“I am, you are, he is. We are, you are, they are…”** _

  


* * *

  


_December, 1935_

Tom awoke with a start, disorientated and confused. It took him a moment to identify what had stirred him before he realised that it had been coming from the direction of his door.

The sound came again, a scuffling on the other side of the wood, and for a moment Tom wondered if it was a family of rats gnawing on the doorframe, before the doorknob twisted and slowly, gently so as not to make a sound, the door swung open to reveal the slight silhouette of a young girl.

The faint moonlight shining through his narrow bedroom window caught in her hair, causing it to shine a pale golden orange, lighting up like a halo framing her face. Tom let out the breath had been holding.

“Nuna,” he said, probably sounding a great deal less surprised than he ought to. “What are you doing?” _breaking into my room in the middle of the night,_ was the silent end to that question.

He could see her grin. “Wishing you a happy birthday, of course,” she said. “What else?”

Tom gaped at her, his own tiredness and the whole weirdness of the situation starting to register. “What, now?” he demanded. “It’s only… wait, what time even is it?”

“About half one in the morning,” she answered promptly. Tom didn’t even ask how she knew. “Now, budge up, because it’s bloody freezing.”

Deciding that it was probably best not to argue, Tom scooted over obligingly, freeing up some of the thin mattress. Nuna slipped in beside him, pressing a small package into his hands as she did so. “Here,” she said. “It took me ages to get, you know. I had to run _so many errands,_ you don’t even know, barely anyone tips for deliveries nowadays–“

Tom ignored her, instead squinting down at the at the object in his hands, trying to figure out what it was. It had been crudely wrapped in a sheet of newspaper and tied off with one of her shoelaces. Despite the poor wrapping, Tom couldn’t help the sudden flood of emotions that hit him just then.

Swallowing back the lump in his throat, he tried valiantly to ignore the warm feeling rising up in his chest. “I… I didn’t get you anything,” he said. “For your birthday, I mean.”

Her birthday had been months ago, and they had spent most of it in a stuffy, third class train carriage surrounded by screaming orphans on the way to Wiltshire.

Nuna shrugged, not seeming very bothered. “Yes but you're a boy,” she said. “Boys are stupid.”

Tom scowled but didn’t reply. I mean, she was _wrong,_ obviously, because even Billy Stubbs knew that girls were infinitely more idiotic than boys, but arguing with Nuna never ended well and she _had_ just given him a gift, so Tom really didn’t feel like pushing his luck.

A gift. He had never been given anything before besides the ‘charity’ of the orphanage – threadbare, hand-me-down clothes and bland food. But here Nuna, despite him all but ignoring her own birthday, had spent God knows how long running packages, to save up enough to get him a present.

It brought up all sorts of annoying, fuzzy feelings in him and for a moment he genuinely considered dropping the gift and throwing his arms around her neck.

“Of course, I do expect you to get me a present for my next birthday,” she added. Ah. And there went the moment.

Rolling his eyes in the darkness, Tom turned his attention back to the package, curiosity welling up inside him as he fumbled with the lace. Christ, had she triple knotted the thing?

At last, he managed to get it to loosen, sliding the newspaper off to reveal a book.

It was brand new with a hardback cover – a rarity in a place like Wools, and he knew that she must have bought this specifically for him. He turned it over in his hands in wonder

_“Lumos.”_

A bolt of magic ran through him as a small light flickered into existence in his hand. The title read _A Guide to Common Snakes._

“You like it?” Nuna asked. “The bookseller was a right git about it, no idea why, I think he thought I was going to steal it or something. Still, I saw it and I knew you’d probably be interested.”

“I like it,” he whispered. It came out rather strained, as he was still trying to control his traitorous emotions from catching up to him. Nuna didn’t seem to notice, because she only shot him her patented smile.

 _“Happy hatch day, Tom,”_ she hissed. 

The pronunciation was terrible, and she used the wrong tense on ‘hatching’, but for once Tom couldn’t find it in him to care.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so this was basically just a chapter of time skips and inner monologues BUT don’t worry bc u can get ready for some ACTION next chapter!! Tommy and Nunziatina are off to the seaside – and we all know how well that worked out…
> 
> Also again, this took ages to post. I’ve actually had it about half written since mid-December, but then I got hit by some pretty bad writers block and then I had to divert some of my attention to fix the shitshow known as my academic life. I don’t really have a schedule for this thing, but I think I’m gonna start aiming for monthly updates, which isn't as often as I’d like, but is probably as realistic as I can make it.
> 
> Thanks 4 reading, see u next time xx


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